If there's one thing that made this country great for the last two hundred years, it's the utility companies that built huge, fossil-fuel-burning power plants to pump out all the electricity this hungry, greedy nation could use. And how do we repay these fine industrialists now? By slowing down our electricity use. Is this Russia?

The WSJ reports on the latest example of laziness by the American consumer:

The Energy Information Administration is projecting that electricity use in the U.S. will rise an average of just 0.6% a year for industrial users and 0.7% for households through 2040.

That's a far cry from the middle decades of the past century, when utilities could rely on electricity consumption growing by more than 8% a year.

Hilariously, the angle of this story is that this decline in growth of electricity use is going to be a financial problem for utility companies. Perhaps they can diversify into producing rafts for consumers to float upon the rising sea levels?